We never learn anything ever:
Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.
Some of the stolen weapons were used in a shooting in November that killed two Americans and three others at a police training facility in Amman, F.B.I. officials believe after months of investigating the attack, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The existence of the weapons theft, which ended only months ago after complaints by the American and Saudi governments, is being reported for the first time after a joint investigation by The New York Times and Al Jazeera. The theft, involving millions of dollars of weapons, highlights the messy, unplanned consequences of programs to arm and train rebels — the kind of program the C.I.A. and Pentagon have conducted for decades — even after the Obama administration had hoped to keep the training program in Jordan under tight control.
The Jordanian officers who were part of the scheme reaped a windfall from the weapons sales, using the money to buy expensive SUVs, iPhones and other luxury items, Jordanian officials said.
I still have no idea how Brennan has a god damned job.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
We just need to step back from this “arming the rebels” and “arming the people we like” shit. As you’ve said, we’ve seen over and over again that it doesn’t work. And, by “doesn’t work,” that isn’t just, well, we tried it, and it didn’t do what we had hoped, but at least it didn’t make it any worse.” ‘Cause it seems like it almost always actively makes things worse.
trollhattan
Here’s hoping the magical guns were delivered alongside pallets of cash. IIUC bundled U.S. hundreds are preferred.
So this is happening in my metroplex as I arrive home from the People’s Republic of Portland (the correct Portland).
The Ancient Randonneur
And just when you think the Brits may have hit the tape ahead of us to win this years Darwin Award for stupidest nation tricks.
BillinGlendaleCA
Pictures of the President with a goat?
Villago Delenda Est
/rolls eyes
No one ever saw this coming. No siree!
trollhattan
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Naaaaaah.
/goat voice
I would not do it with a goat
I would not do it on a boat
I would not do it smeared in Spam
I want some CIA accountability before I scram
Mnemosyne
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Jordan was supposed to be one of the less corrupt allies in the region, but apparently “less corrupt” is a very relative term.
@trollhattan:
I was pretty sure it was Bay Area anarchists as soon as the first reports started coming in. There is no bad situation that those assholes can’t manage to make worse.
James E Powell
Smedley Butler had it right 70 years ago – Plenty of people have been saying the same thing since. Not enough people want to listen & learn.
Mnemosyne
Complete and total speculation: I have a feeling that Hillary ain’t too fond of the CIA for their Benghazi shenanigans that got her ambassador killed. IIRC, there’s never been much love lost between State and CIA since their aims are frequently at odds with each other. Any possibility she might be motivated to sit on them a little harder given their multiple recent failures?
gex
Or we’ve learned one thing and we keep learning it over and over. Weapons sales are great business because weapons sales lead to the need for more weapons sales.
redshirt
@gex: Gun sales are like anti farming.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
It’s a short drive, and the heat would make them extra crazy what with the black garb and all. We’ll see what shakes out of the inevitable investigations. SPD probably won’t be lead agency since IIUC it took place on the Capitol grounds. CHP and the AG office have a lot more resources.
Sadly, there’s no way to decline the nazi’s permit request so long as they followed the rules, which is as close to yelling “fire” in a crowded theater as can be had.
Mr Stagger Lee
Oh oh, the Reich Wing Nose Machine will call it Fast and Furious 2.0, never mind no one cared, plus how do you stick it to Hillary. Fox whack off material for the Obama Haters.
laura
Holy Toledo! I took the weiner-dog out to get his claws trimmed and had to do the massive-go ’round, which I thought was due to Pride-fest program related activities. Turns out, the neo-nazi’s rallied in Sacto, and got their asses beat by over 400 anti-fascist counter protesters.
There’s still a whiff of “fuck those nazi fuckers” hanging in the air.
bmoak
@Mnemosyne:
I, for one, can’t want for the Black Bloc crew to show up in Philadelphia for the convention and join the Sanders protestors outside. What could possibly go wrong?
Psych1
What am I missing here? I thought this was a pro-Hillary neocon blog. Isn’t this what she supports?
WaterGirl
@Psych1: That’s down the hall. This is abuse.
Gussie
All I know is, the buck stops with Brennan.
laura
Nazis and skins always carry knives.
WaterGirl
@Gussie: Let me fix that for you.
All I know is, the buck apparently doesn’t stop anywhere
stops with Brennan.redshirt
What buck?
El Caganer
Hey, this was a good outcome – if they had actually handed over the weapons to “our” rebels, those goodies would be in the hands of al-Nusra before you could say “quagmire.”
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: I’ve read speculation that the e-mail controversy hinges largely on disagreement between State and the CIA about how much should be classified, and the investigation partly results from the CIA wanted to make it clear to Clinton that they’re in charge.
JPL
This is good news for McCain.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: A good chunk of the Intel Community’s (IC) push and efforts on the email stuff is directed at both her and the State Department. They are trying to make it perfectly clear to her, as the potential next president (and any other potential next presidents, not that Trump or anyone working for him is smart enough to pick up the signals), just who is the real institutional power in DC. This signaling has the secondary effect of roughing up State a bit too, which from the IC’s perspective is never a bad thing.
Adam L Silverman
@bmoak: In Philadelphia the cops could blow up a city block.
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
Hey, Adam. Specifically on the topic of this post. How well do these ‘arming the opposition’ things work? That sometimes the weapons would get into the wrong hands is inevitable. Whether that makes it a stupid policy depends on the effectiveness of the program overall, and if it outweighs that negative. There are, let’s face it, no options that do NOT have nastiness mixed in. I’d really like the thoughts of an expert on this.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck: Good question. I had the same thought.
HinTN
@Frankensteinbeck: How far back do you want to go? The answer is never!!!
srv
@Iowa Old Lady: the very first email Hillary sent from her rogue domain was to… Wait for it… Patreaus
She may have never been under sniper fire, but she sure knew how to set herself up.
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
If Jordan is an operational clusterfuck, for something as basic as do not steal inventory, I do not know if there are reliable actors in the region.
I really wish a peace process can begin.
Adam L Silverman
@Frankensteinbeck: @Baud: @HinTN: Its mixed. We have specific group of Special Forces who’s job it is to do this: the Green Berets. They are very good at it. Because of the high tempo and high volume of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom our other Special Forces got crash courses and then a lot of on the job experience doing it as well, while some Green Berets wound up doing the same thing with the jobs these other units traditionally do. And we also wound up building ad hoc Conventional Force teams to do it as well. A lot of success or failure has to do with the mission itself, as well as who you wind up partnering with in country. An unclassified monograph I read last Summer had an interview with one of the Green Beret NCOs that was early into Anbar Province to work with the tribes. They were all set up and something prevented them from getting the birds on the ground to take the Iraqi tribesmen for training. That night, while they waited for transport, the bad guys hit a number of local villages. As soon as the Iraqis heard they went home rather than waiting for transport and going through training. So you had a bunch of locals willing to be trained, but events overtook the mission.
That said, this is a CIA operation. And other than what I read in the news media, I don’t know anything about the CIA’s paramilitary and its operations.
PaulWartenberg2016
The CIA officers in charge of that assignment should have kept a closer eye on things, made sure those supplies got to where they were going.
This is incompetence at BEST. Every one of them should be fired, or charged with criminal malpractice or something. And if the Jordanian government doesn’t want us giving them the full neocon treatment they BETTER hand over their corrupt officers to us for trial.
Miss Bianca
@Iowa Old Lady: I remember Adam making that point on this yere blog a little while back.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: Isn’t the fact that our civilian political leadership has spooks and special forces bearing weapons and training as pretty much its only remaining option a pretty bad sign? Doing nothing would present bad optics and offer its own horrors, of course, but this seems like treading water until a life raft floats to within reach. I haven’t seen any better ideas out there, unfortunately.
I feel bad for those foreign service professionals in DoS who signed that petition to…DO SOMETHING!! But I gotta agree with Ali Gharib,* who sympathizes with their position and respects their motivation and concerns, but doesn’t see any path forward from the high risk, short term kind of actions the DoS petitioners are calling for. The Russians wouldn’t likely stand idly by either, as they didn’t when the various anti-Assad factions started making inroads on the battlefields.
*The Diplomats’ Revolt on Syria: Dozens of American diplomats are calling for strikes against the Assad regime, but they offer no endgame.
El Caganer
@sharl: The Russians have been suggesting a negotiated peace for years, but our desire to oust Assad in favor of – well, who knows what? – kept us from participating. There was a recent agreement to cease hostilities, with the object to begin serious negotiations, and the Russians pulled a lot of their people and equipment out. Unfortunately we and our allies couldn’t resist the temptation to flood the zone with weapons and a bunch of new rebels. Once they started attacking government forces, the wheels came off again. It doesn’t look like anything good for the Syrian people is going to happen any time soon.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: Its a good question, but I think the larger problem here is that the news media doesn’t do a very good job of reporting on what we’re actually doing, let alone the policy behind it. There are 9 lines of operation for US and Coalition actions in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere that we’re trying to interdict ISIS. It is important to remember that the military only has complete control over two of these lines of effort and partial/shared control of one and maybe if you want to stretch two more. So there’s a lot more going on, with a lot more Interagency participation and oversight, than just throwing Special Forces, a 3 star HQ to coordinate the Coalition Task Force, and some Intel assets at the problem.
Here’s the Strategy:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/10/fact-sheet-strategy-counter-islamic-state-iraq-and-levant-isil
Here’s the lines of operation:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/07/fact-sheet-administration-s-strategy-counter-islamic-state-iraq-and-leva
Here’s State’s fact sheet that provides information on our Coalition Partners and the current Special Envoy:
http://www.state.gov/s/seci/
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks Adam. I’ll try to look at those links before turning in tonight.
Raven on the Hill
“I still have no idea how Brennan has a god damned job.”
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: Let me know where you want me to mail the quiz?//
You’re quite welcome. I’m always amazed when even the print news media can’t be bothered to just look up the most basic facts on this stuff and put it into the reporting. I don’t expect everyone in the US to go and read the National Security Strategy or the National Defense Strategy or the National Diplomatic and Development Strategy, but it would kill the news to actually look them up and start with these things. Everything we do we have at least one, and sometimes multiple policies for. Sometimes that’s a problem as the different policies don’t actually create a coherent whole. This is, actually, part of the problem with our policies in the Levant. We have multiple ones, some overlapping and complimentary, some in conflict. And for every policy we have a strategy. And almost all of them can be found with just a few minutes of searching on the Internet.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: Our media needs to attract eyeballs – constantly – so that those eyeballs will in turn attract advertisers, preferably at high ad rates. That is not a business model amenable to insertion of “dry facts” and information into a broadcast. Artillery and small arms fire, shouting combatants (preferably including one or two with wounds that aren’t too disturbing to the folks watching at home), clusters of homeless refugees – now that’s the ticket!
Plus a fair number of people are skeptical, and not all of those skeptics are wingnuts with minds poisoned by many years of propaganda from Fox and that media bunch. I hope the text in the links you’ve provided account for that sort of thing, to the extent it is possible.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: I’m all too aware of what our news media as. As for the information I’ve directed you to, its just the facts ma’am, just the facts.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: For posts issued in late 2014, those White House and DoS links hold up pretty well. And DoS has been updating the sublinks at their site, which is the sort of thing that tends to be an early casualty of bureaucracies losing their way on mission motivation. That clearly doesn’t seem to be a problem here.
But what a dangerous journey through the Valley of Fire, Shadows and Fog that whole business is! One problem for us common citizens is keeping up with all the components of the strife…Are Moqtada Sadr and his Shia militias getting more restive about not getting a bigger slice of the pie from the rather besieged leadership in Baghdad? [And are the reports of killings by militias of Sunnis newly freed from Daesh control true, and continuing?]. Does the increasingly autocratic behavior of Turkey’s Erdogan – which seems to slide into full blown meglomania on occasion – and Turkey’s rather lukewarm opposition to Daesh continue to pose challenges? And the huge refugee crisis; don’t know where to even start there. Etc., etc…
Some of that information does show up in major media on occasion, but as you note, not nearly often enough.
sharl
Reckon I should take a stab at answering some of my own questions.
On the matter of possible Shia militia killings of Sunni escapees from Daesh control, that has reportedly been a problem, according to this report from earlier this month:
‘300 civilians executed’ by Iraqi militias during Fallujah fighting: Activists
Reports of torture and executions of Fallujah civilians have been seeping out in the past few days
There appears to be confirmation of this – here’s one link; Daily Beast also has a post confirming this.
sharl
As far as domestic Iraqi politics goes, it looks like the Fallujah campaign was popular with a lot of the Shia majority, giving Prime Minister Abadi a bit of breathing room for now. Things were dicier back in April, and could roll back to that state again once the glow of the Fallujah victory has dimmed. That’s another fun thing on the U.S. task list, to do whatever they can to support Abadi and help avoid any further slide toward fracturing of the country.
sharl
As for Turkey, Erdogan and his government does a never-ending balancing act, playing off different actors in the area (including the U.S.) while continuing their campaigns against various Kurdish factions (AFAICT, mostly the PKK, though not exclusively so). You can find damn near any Turkish stance in an online search: Turkey wavering in their opposition to Daesh/ISIS, Turkey battling Daesh/ISIS, and a lot of variations of these stances. I’m guessing they are all true.
In that DoS link Adam provided above, Turkey was listed as one of the 66 countries in the anti-Daesh coalition, but in the sublink of Foreign Leader Statements, Turkish leadership is rather conspicuous by its absence; sad!
And a thing that may become increasingly relevant: there are strong indications that Erdogan dreams of a resurrection of the Ottoman Empire, and that can only add to the fun!
sharl
Oooh, here’s a link while closing my gazillion open tabs: an example of creativity borne of desperation on the part of at least one Syrian civilian located in an area subjected to Russian bombardment.
It’s a video (1m2s) of someone who has recovered an unexploded version of “just your everyday explosive cluster submunition” – not an incendiary, as the video poster stated – and has repurposed its contents as cooking fuel.
Yay for everyone who does this without injury; may you all survive to live better days.
El Caganer
@sharl: Here’s a somewhat more cynical take on the story reported on in the original post:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/06/jordan-bad-officials-tell-nyt-pressure-for-a-new-southern-front-attack.html
sharl
@El Caganer: Thanks. Where reporting out interviews with spooks is concerned, anything is possible. Without a second source, it is reasonable to think it is more stenography than reporting. Mazzetti has been justifiably suspected of that before (also, too). In fairness to Mazzetti and his NYT colleagues who are often in a similar boat (e.g., David Sanger), covering spooks is a tricky beat. If the NYT isn’t going to devote a lot more time and resources to developing second sources – often in very dangerous places in the world – then at least these stories should come with a disclaimer that the information from the primary source(s) could not be verified independently.
This is the kind of dirty work in the shadows that the spooks are tasked to do, and as long as the bosses in Spookland do this dirty work so the political leadership keeps their hands clean, they’ll never have to worry much about being sanctioned by the White House* or the “oversight” committees in Congress. At worse, they’ll get a public scolding and admonition not to do the bad thing again.
*And I mean any White House, including this Obama Administration I have huge respect for.
…
I’d kind of forgotten about Moon of Alabama since it took over after Billmon stopped blogging so long ago. Glad to see it is still alive and kicking.